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Speaker Bios

The world, life and human beings are only an illusion, a phantom, a dream image.

-August Strindberg

Presenters

Anna Westerstahl Stenport, PhD

Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies,
Theatre, Cinema and Media Studies, and Comparative and World Literature at
the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Anna is the author of Locating August Strindberg's Prose: Modernism, Transnationalism, Setting (Toronto University Press, 2010), the editor of The International Strindberg (Northwestern University Press, forthcoming), and the author of Lukas Moodysson's 'Show Me Love' , (University of Washington Press, forthcoming 2012).

Associate Professor, Director of History, Literature and Criticism, University of Albany

Eszter Szalczer holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from the City University of New York and a Doctorate in Comparative Literature from the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. Professor Szalczer teaches courses in dramatic literature, theatre history, criticism, dramaturgy and research. She is an internationally published theatre scholar, specializing in modern drama and performance in general and in the work of Swedish playwright August Strindberg in particular. Her piece "Nature's Dream Play: Modes of Vision and Strindberg's Re-definition of the Theatre" (Theatre Journal 2001) was awarded the Gerald Kahan Scholar's Prize by The American Society for Theatre Research. She is recipient of many other prestigious research awards, including fellowships from the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Clarence Sheffield, Jr.

Foundations Department, CIAS, RIT

Clarence Burton Sheffield, Jr. Ph.D. Chip is an Associate Professor in the Foundations Department of the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at RIT where he has taught since 2003. His courses primarily focus on modern and contemporary topics. An expert on modern and contemporary Scandinavian art, architecture, and design, he wrote his doctoral dissertation on modern Norwegian art at Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA. His scholarship and research centers on the modern era, with special emphasis on philosophical aesthetics, critical theories of the image, as well as visual and literary culture (including such key figures as Ibsen, Strindberg, Munch, Kierkegaard and Ellen Key).

Cecilia Ovesdotter Alm

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English, CLA, RIT

Cecilia Ovesdotter Alm is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English, RIT. As a linguist, her current research interest in Strindberg is centered on how the work of Strindberg allows theoretical and applied explorations of the intersection between linguistics and creative culture in connection with the digital humanities.

Timothy Engström

Professor, Department of Philosophy, CLA, RIT

Tim Engström is a New York stater who studied initially in New York, then in Sweden, Britain, and Germany, then went back to Edinburgh, Scotland, for his Ph.D. When not inside, he's outside; when not teaching, reading or writing, he tinkers with an old house or old stuff or travels to avoid having to fix the old stuff. He taught first at the University of Hawaii before coming to RIT, where he has been since 1988. He prefers the Adirondacks to strip malls, skiing to faculty meetings, fictional truth to logical truth, old vehicles to new vehicles, some philosophy books to other philosophy books.

Peter Ferran

Professor, Department of Fine Arts/Theater, CLA, RIT

Peter W. Ferran is Professor of Fine Arts/Theatre in the RIT College of Liberal Arts. He has directed campus theatre productions of Shakespeare, Goethe, Moliere, Brecht, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and others, and has published essays on Brecht's drama in performance. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan.

Jessica Lieberman

Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Arts, CIAS, RIT

Jessica Catherine Lieberman is Assistant Professor of Visual Culture at the Rochester Institute of Technology and most recently the author of Traumatic Images(Photographies, Routledge Press; 2008), and Strategic Ghosting (Spectral America, University of Wisconsin Press; 2006). Lieberman is currently working on a book, Terror and Traumatic Images, which associates the experience of images, especially photographic ones, with trauma-like reactions.

Lieberman has also published on visual arts and cultural identity in Mexico and pedagogical approaches to teaching both visual culture and biography.

David Munnell

Director of the Exact Theatre Ensemble with RIT alumni

Mr. Munnell received his MFA in Directing from Florida State University in 1983. For the past 30 years he has been a professional actor, director and writer. In that time, Mr. Munnell has directed, acted in, and produced over 100 plays, including classics, contemporary works, and musicals. For the past two years, Mr. Munnell has been an adjunct theatre instructor at RIT. In addition, Mr. Munnell has taught at SUNY Geneseo, SUNY Fredonia, the University of Minnesota, and at studios and workshops in New York City and Florida. In addition to his work with the Exact Theatre Ensemble, Mr. Munnell has worked locally with the Rochester Children's Theatre, St. Fortune Productions, and The Bristol Valley Theatre.

Sandra Saari

Professor of Literature, Department of English, CLA, RIT

Research and publication on Henrik Ibsen. Teaching and research in Francophone literatures and cultures, Latin American literature and culture, medieval Icelandic literature and culture.

Jonathan Schroeder

Professor, Department of Communications, CLA, RIT

Professor Schroeder has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and he did postdoctoral work at Rhode Island School of Design. Prior to joining RIT in 2010, he was Chair in Marketing at the University of Exeter, UK.

He has published widely on branding, communication, consumer research, and identity. His current research involves four intersecting areas: aesthetic leadership, branding, ethics of representation and visual communication, photography, in particular. He is the author of Visual Consumption (Routledge, 2002) and co-editor of Brand Culture (Routledge, 2006). Ongoing projects includes co-editing the Routledge Companion to Visual Organization, co-writing a book on Chinese Global Brand Culture, and working on papers on brand trust, graphic design and the LP record, marketing semiotics, and the digital consumer. He is editor in chief of the interdisciplinary journal Consumption Markets & Culture, and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Advertising and Society Review, Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty, European Journal of Marketing, Innovative Marketing, International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Journal of Macromarketing, Marketing Theory and Visual Methodologies.

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About

2012 Symposium Commemorating

August Strindberg: Author, Visual Artist, and Playwright

at Rochester Institute of Technology from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm on March 23, 2012.

The symposium will feature invited talks with respondents, additional short talks, a moderated panel discussion, a staged reading of Playing with Fire , and a book exhibit. This event is free and open to the public. Link to symposium poster with program

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The symposium will feature invited talks with respondents, additional short talks, a moderated panel discussion, a staged reading of Playing with Fire , and a book exhibit. This event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Swedish Institute and co-sponsored by RIT's College of Liberal Arts and College of Imaging Arts and Sciences.